this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
1091 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

59651 readers
2670 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
1091
Man Arrested for Creating Fake Bands With AI, Then Making $10 Million by Listening to Their Songs With Bots (futurism.com)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
229 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

The songs that the AI CEO provided to Smith originally had file names full of randomized numbers and letters such as "n_7a2b2d74-1621-4385-895d-b1e4af78d860.mp3," the DOJ noted in its detailed press release.

When uploading them to streaming platforms, including Amazon Music, Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube Music, the man would then change the songs' names to words like "Zygotes," "Zygotic," and "Zyme Bedewing," whatever that is.

The artist naming convention also followed a somewhat similar pattern, with names ranging from the normal-sounding "Calvin Mann" to head-scratchers like "Calorie Event," "Calms Scorching," and "Calypso Xored."

To manufacture streams for these fake songs, Smith allegedly used bots that stream the songs billions of times without any real person listening. As with similar schemes, the bots' meaningless streams were ultimately converted to royalty paychecks for the people behind them.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

AFAIK YT Music does this. The money from your subscription gets divided amongst whatever you listened to.

That still wouldn't address the stolen account problem, but yes, it'd be a huge improvement.

I have no idea why Spotify still sticks to this massively exploitable model, except for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

exceot for the fact that it MASSIVELY inflates their stats for investors and advertisers.

Ah yes, the Reddit strategy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's super cool to know. Seems more fair than the way Spotify does it?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Google has been doing it with YouTube for as long as there has been a paid version of it. If you're a premium subscriber, the creators you watch get a portion of your subscription based on how much you watch them. It's why premium subscriber views are worth more than free views.

That's why IMO YouTube premium is worth it. My subscription supports the creators I watch and I get no ads.